The “mysterious grey fog” that descended upon Choa Chu Kang last week is being blamed on people burning incense paper for the Hungry Ghost Festival. Even the NEA was called in to confirm that no smoke plumes were visible by satellite. That’s two years running that CCK has been blanketed with a haze around this time of year. We guess those ghosts just like their food smoked…To judge by the overexcited headlines though, we’re all craving a bit more variety in our weather patterns. Year-round sunshine and rain you can set your clock by are now simply too predictable for our increasingly cosmopolitan, connected citizens. But since we’ll have to wait a few years yet for global warming to come up with the goods, perhaps we need to take meteorological affairs into our hands a bit more often. Creating fog out of paper money is just the start of it.Snow. OK, so we don’t have too many hills for sledging; but wouldn’t it be nice to see Orchard Road covered in real snow, for a change? Time to harness our good old friend, the a/c unit. If every mall along the strip throws open its doors 24/7, it’s surely just a matter of time before the ambient temperature falls sufficiently to bring a little white magic to our streets.Sleet. Not something we have to contend with here, though we all know that sleet is simply transparent frozen raindrops. What’s less widely known is that you can easily fake it using Swarovski crystals. All we need to do is retrofit the laser beams so popular with nightclubs here with giant cannons firing glittering beads all over town.Sandstorm. An easy one, this. All you hundreds of smug and healthy folk out running along the East Coast just need to move off the pathway and onto the beach; and start kicking your heels up more.Tornadoes. Just to keep things fresh, you know. A strong wind to blow away some of the city’s more ridiculous faces and places really wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Position some signs directing people to queue around the block at Takashimaya for some “Ultra Limited Edition, Only Available for 15 Minutes, New Kind of Chicken Rice”. Then, once the line has filled out, whisper in each person’s ear that the girl in front might beat them to it. That’ll whip up a whirling, churning storm in no time.
